Cuban reformer works quietly

Petitioners seek peaceful change

HAVANA — It took dissident Oswaldo Paya about a year to gather 11,200 signatures seeking to change Cuba's constitution and allow free elections.

It took the Communist government of Fidel Castro three days to collect 8.1 million signatures essentially telling Paya that socialism was here to stay.

But Paya, a devout Catholic and longtime activist, was not discouraged. Not by a long shot. He's upbeat and raring for a fight, though he says that any battle that takes place in Cuba must be done though the ballot box and not through violence.

Paya, leader of a movement known as the Varela Project, received a burst of publicity in May when his efforts were applauded by visiting former President Jimmy Carter. He now says he has organized a network of 150 activists to collect pro-democracy signatures and inform Cubans about their civil rights.

"In our hands, we have between four and five thousand" new signatures, Paya said in an interview at his modest home. "In all of Cuba there may be a lot more."

Paya's one-man battle against the powerful Communist Party apparatus may seem akin to a Little Leaguer trying to hit major-league pitching. But political analysts and diplomats say the 50-year-old activist's campaign for signatures--an unprecedented effort in a place where public dissent is risky--is a significant step forward for the often-fractured opposition movement.

While few experts actually expect the Cuban government to hold a referendum on democratic reforms, many say that Paya's continued efforts to create a nationwide civic movement may be the most important step for the internal dissident movement since Castro took power 43 years ago.

"What the Varela Project represents is a change for the opposition from a group of human-rights activists to a genuine opposition," said Philip Peters, a Cuba expert at the Lexington Institute, a Washington think tank.

Constitutional gambit

Last spring, Paya gathered 11,200 signatures and submitted them to the National Assembly, seeking a vote on free elections, freedom of speech and assembly, amnesty for political prisoners, and other democratic reforms. The Cuban Constitution requires such a referendum if more than 10,000 signatures are collected, according to Paya.

The Cuban government has yet to respond directly to Paya's signature campaign, though it did organize a countercampaign in June in which the government said 8.1 million Cubans, 99 percent of the electorate, signed a petition seeking a constitutional amendment declaring Cuba's socialist system "irrevocable."

Some analysts and diplomats said that many Cubans signed the government petition because they genuinely support the revolution's advances in health care, education and other areas, though life for most Cubans--as in much of Latin America--is a daily struggle to make ends meet.

But many other Cubans, experts say, signed the document because they feared government reprisals, which could include everything from being denied permission to travel abroad to having a privately owned restaurant shut down.

"They came to my house and said `sign here,'" explained a 46-year-old Havana electrician. "What was I supposed to do? I could lose my job if I didn't."

Born in Havana to a family of devout Catholics, Paya said that he and his family had been opposed to Castro's government almost from the start.

As a student dissident, Paya spent three years in forced labor at a marble quarry and cutting sugar cane. More recently, his house was ransacked by state security agents and the facade spray-painted with graffiti calling him a CIA agent and gusano, or worm, a term used by the government to describe anti-Castro activists in Miami.

Security agents, he said, have taken up residence across the street from his house, but attempts at intimidation push him to "continue fighting."

No access to media

Paya has a tough road ahead. Many Cubans still have never heard of the Varela Project, and Paya, like all dissidents here, is denied access to the state-run media.

Paya also is facing intense criticism from some Cuban dissidents, who accuse him of selling out to Castro by trying to change the system peacefully.

"We have a lot of respect for Oswaldo Paya and what he is doing, but we don't see it as a solution," said Ninoska Perez, speaking for the Miami-based Cuban Liberty Council.

But analysts and diplomats give Paya credit for taking huge steps to unite the dissident movement inside Cuba and for pushing ahead with his civic campaign despite reports of harassment and intimidation.

"There hasn't been much civic opposition in Cuba," explained one Western diplomat. "They are all suspicious of each other and everyone around them. The Varela Project has been able to move beyond that."